Ex-Addnl Commissioner of IT sent to jail for 4 yrs

New Delhi: A former Additional Commissioner
of Income Tax, arrested by CBI for demanding Rs one lakh as
bribe for clearing a tax return matter, has been sentenced to
four years in jail by a Delhi court.

Special CBI Judge Talwant Singh also imposed a fine of Rs
four lakh on convict H A Siddiqui in the graft case registered
against him in 2003 on a complaint by a chartered accountant M
M Sachdeva.

"Prosecution (CBI) has been successful in proving that
accused H A Siddiqui had demanded bribe of Rs one lakh from R
P Katyal through his CA M M Sachdeva who is the complainant in
this case.

"...The conversation recorded in office of the accused
shows that demand of bribe was made by the accused in clear
words and place of acceptance was to be fixed later on as he
had taken the mobile phone number of Katyal," the court said.

According to CBI, Sachdeva had filed Katyal`s income
tax return for 2000-01 and it was selected for scrutiny
assessment and a notice in this regard was received by Katyal
on October 25, 2002.

Siddiqui started sending summons to them in this regard
and called Katyal to pay Rs one lakh bribe, the agency said.

It said a trap team was constituted and it apprehended
Siddiqui and one M C Gupta, who was a prosecution witness in
the case, at the spot and money was recovered from the polybag
carried by Gupta.

CBI had registered the FIR in the case on April 2, 2003,
and had filed its chargesheet against Siddiqui in November
that year.

During the trial, Siddiqui claimed innocence saying
Sachdeva and Gupta, both chartered accountants, had tried to
get undue advantage from him and when he refused to do so,
they implicated him in a false case.

The court, however, said CBI has proved its case against
Siddiqui beyond reasonable doubt.

The court also relied on reports regarding identification
of voices saying that it has been proved beyond reasonable
doubt that the voice samples were of Siddiqui, Sachdeva and
Katyal.

"Report regarding identification of voices in the
questioned recording as well as the specimen recording are
proved beyond reasonable doubt being of accused (Siddiqui),
the complainant and Katyal," it said.